


like you would do for one you love

by napoleonscomet



Category: Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Gen, Past Relationships, a denoument
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-09 12:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20994485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/napoleonscomet/pseuds/napoleonscomet
Summary: The other man studies the liquid in his glass. “It’s not for you to apologize for the duel.”“I will anyway.”“Don’t,” Dolokhov intones. “I was abominable to you, and I’ve just enough pride left to me now to say that I’m better now than I was then.”(After everything, Pierre comes to set things right.)





	like you would do for one you love

**Author's Note:**

> part of the continuity of these old laurel leaves

It feels strange to be knocking on the door to Dolokhov’s apartment. Stranger still for him to know the address of the place the other man is living—for all the time that they have known each other it has been in the context of—the Kuragins. Even after everything, or perhaps because of it, the Christian name hurts him to think about. But for now it is enough to recognize that he has never seen Dolokhov living by himself.

The door opens; a man appears. It’s not the Dolokhov Pierre was expecting to see, but he knows the man before him far better than the man he last saw. His blond hair is cropped short, a slightly overgrown mustache sits upon his upper lip. He still holds himself straight and proudly, but he seems almost shorter, or smaller. Like he’s been blown back to Moscow on the same wind that’s caught Pierre like a sail and sent him in directions so utterly bizarre to him.

“Pyotr Kirillovich,” Dolokhov greets him—his proper name and patronymic a knife that cuts at his heart. _Petruskha_, the old Dolokhov’s voice echoes somewhere behind his ears. He stutters on the return greeting.

“Fed—Fyodor Ivanovich.” A pause.

“Did you mean to come in?” Pierre nods. He is still standing on the doorstep, and it is only February. A chill wind gusts past his exposed ears and into the building. “Then do it.”

Dolokhov holds the door open, and Pierre steps inside. Their movement around each other is very simple: a sentence with two clauses, each independent. Connected by an elementary conjunction, so very nearly discrete. Pierre is still by no means a small man, but he is yet unused to how captivity has shrunk him—he cuts a far wider berth around the other man than necessary. That, and he is wary. The old Dolokhov could well by now have struck at him like a dog on the street.

The new Dolokhov pours him a helping of vodka without asking—Pierre has been trying to abstain, as of late, but he takes it anyway, if only to hold something in his hands—and sits, legs crossed, in an armchair in his small sitting room, and gestures for Pierre to do the same. The old Pierre would never have started the conversation. The old Dolokhov would have leapt down his throat before he could even have had a chance to pass up. Now, neither of them say anything, each waiting for the other to take the lead.

Finally Dolokhov gestures out from himself. “Why are you here?” The blade of himself has dulled: the question is pointed, but not cutting.

“It has been,” Pierre replies, and spreads the fingers of his left hand over his knee, “a long time.”

“Two years?” Dolokhov ventures. “February of 1811.” Pierre shakes his head.

“Seven?” he asks, and it is a speculation. He cannot remember a whit of the duel, not least the year of it. He counts backwards, and finds 1806 revoltingly antique. Dolokhov pauses, and nods.

“It would be,” he agrees.

“I meant to apologize,” Pierre confesses. “I wanted to do it right after, but I was ashamed, and then I found that you had posted with the Rostovs, and I thought not to get involved with that. Especially when I heard of...how it ended.” There is a question in the last sentence, one which Dolokhov pretends not to hear.

The other man studies the liquid in his glass. “It’s not for you to apologize for the duel.”

“I will anyway.”

“_Don’t_,” Dolokhov intones. “I was abominable to you, and I’ve just enough pride left to me now to say that I’m better now than I was then.”

“What changed?” Pierre asks.

“You know.” Pierre’s not sure if he means know, _be aware of_, or know, _understand_. He nods, trying for an intermediary knowledge.

Dolokhov fixes him with a knowing glance. “I always was curious,” he says. “You and Bolkonsky?”

Pierre shrugs, a twinge of guilt at how the movement is coded with indifference. He’s never discussed Andrei’s ambiguities before, never thought he would trust something that cuts him so deeply to _Dolokhov_ of all people, but he realizes he’ll likely never have the chance to talk about it again. After a long pause, he chokes out: “To an extent. On my part...certainly. I was never really sure to what extent it was reciprocated.”

“Was he..?”

Pierre nods. “I’m not sure how aware of it he was. But he was—we were. _Involved_.”

“Can I ask when?”

“Once, right after Austerlitz. Once before Borodino.”

“Not ongoing?” Dolokhov looks vaguely surprised. Pierre shakes his head. “But you...”

Pierre’s never said the word before, has hardly ever dared to think it. “Loved him. Yes.”

Dolokhov smiles far more kindly than Pierre has ever seen from him before, and downs the last of the vodka in his glass. “I always wondered how alike you and I were.”

“And how alike is that?” In response, Dolokhov just smiles again, his closed lips twisting up.

“Have you ever wondered,” he asks instead of answering, “why I never did to Nikolai Rostov what I did to you?” Pierre remembers how Rostov had gathered Dolokhov’s crumpled body into his arms, pressed his expensive wool gloves to the wound in his side and a frantic kiss to his forehead. Remembers Dolokhov’s steadying hand on Rostov’s shoulder as he staggered under the weight of his brother. He shakes his head.

Dolokhov chuckles. “I fell in love.”

“With Rostov?”

“Not hardly, although I can’t say the same for him. No. With Sophie Alexandrovna.”

Pierre raises his eyebrows. “Loved?”

“Like I said,” Dolokhov replies, “you and I are alike.” It takes a minute for Pierre to figure out what he means by it. “The countess Rostova,” he clarifies in the interim, the words nearly sardonic on his tongue. There, then, is the first hint of the Dolokhov Pierre once had known. It’s not mocking, not quite, but the edge of cruelty is just close enough to present that Pierre’s fingers still from the thread of his trousers he is worrying. “I heard of your engagement. Congratulations,” but his voice is flat. Pierre remembers him reaching down to whisper something in Helene’s ear, lips pale against her dark hair.

“You know that Rostov has broken with her?” It’s a foolish question: He knows that Dolokhov and Rostov have long since made their peace. Dolokhov nods. “Would you try again?” He shakes his head.

“I have that much pride left still.” Pierre hums. The conversation peters out then, until Dolokhov asks: “Did you see him, before the end?”

Pierre shakes his head, his vision suddenly blurring. “Did you?” He hesitates in asking the question, not knowing what terms they ended on.

He smiles unsteadily, glances down at his hands. “No. No, I didn’t.” A beat later. “Not that I didn’t try.”

Pierre takes his first sip of vodka. “I didn’t.” It comes out quietly. “I meant to, but then something—something came over me. I couldn’t think straight—couldn’t think about anything but. What I thought was my _destiny_. I was so close to him too—I stopped by the Rostovs’, Natasha waved at me from the very carriage in front of his. But no, I didn’t see him. I didn’t even try to.”

Dolokhov reaches out to clasp Pierre’s free hand, and for an instant he almost flinches away—he remembers his lips on the other man’s throat, both breaths heavy with alcohol, the hoarse whisper of _Petruskha;_ remembers the careful way Dolokhov’s gaze rested on Pierre as he casually remarked on his own reputation as a duellist forbidding anyone from daring to challenge his honor, and the vice-grip of his hand around Pierre’s wrist as he reminded Pierre of his bastard status and the secret of his he knew that could utterly undo him. Again, the panic in Rostov’s eyes mirroring the panic of his own, the way Dolokhov’s fingers had brushed his own as he plucked the song-card from his hands. Another snowy day, terrible as the first, swaying with hunger and fatigue, Dolokhov’s strong hands holding him steady—

he accepts the touch, setting his glass on the floor so he can wrap both his hands around Dolokhov’s, and they draw each other up into a tight and silent embrace. _You put me through so much_ , he wants his arms to say, _but now I have lost and you have lost, and here we are again_.

“Thank you, Pierre,” Dolokhov says softly, and it’s not what he used to call him, but it is familiar, and it is kind.


End file.
